Mobile operating systems (OSes) for mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) evolve quickly. For at least some mobile OSes, major updates or new overhauls of entire systems are made available as often as once every few months, bringing brand new mobile device applications (apps) and enriched functionalities with each update. Conventional wisdom is that such a vibrant ecosystem benefits the mobile device users, providing enhanced security by plugging loopholes in a timely manner, as well as providing enhanced functionality.
Indeed, for years, major smartphone vendors and system/software developers have leveraged convenient updating mechanisms on mobile devices to push out fixes and enhance existing protection. Such updates are becoming increasingly frequent (e.g., with respect to the Android mobile OS, the first 19 major updates occurred on average about once every 3.4 months) and increasingly complicated (e.g., hundreds of apps being added or replaced each time by hundreds of different Android device vendors).